Dingonek
|Reported = 1907 (sighting) 1910 (publication) |Researchers = • Bernard Heuvelmans • James Powell}} The dingonek was a cryptid reported from southern , known to the Masai, Kikuyu, and Lumbaya, and made famous by a 1907 sighting by English adventurer John Alfred Jordan. Bernard Heuvelmans classified it with the water lions seen elsewhere in Africa. It has not been reported since 1907, when it was already said to be rare, and, if it was real, it may now be extinct. Description Three unknown animals are considered under the name "dingonek": the dingonek itself, the Masai ol-umaina of the Amala River, and the Kikuyu ndamathia of the Tana River. They have been regarded as synonymous since 1913 due to their range and very similar appearances. Both Jordan and the second eyewitness described the dingonek as around fifteen feet long, covered in scales like an armadillo, and spotted like a leopard. Jordan described its head as the shape and colour of a leopards but the size of a lioness', whilst the second informant compared it to that of an otter, a comparision which Jordan also used later. Jordan also reported that the dingonek had long, white fangs, a feature unmentioned by the second witness. Further, according to Jordan, it had a broad hippopotamus-like back, and a finned tail. Its tracks are described as being the size and general shape of those of a hippopotamus, but with the imprints of claws. As reported in both sightings, the dingonek is aquatic, swimming with slow, lazy swishes of its tail. According to Jordan, when it leapt from the water it did so with its entire body, almost vertically, apparently standing on its tail. After the publication of Jordan's sighting, the District Commissioner of Kisii, a Mister Crampton, made inquires about the animal to the Masai of Amala River, and discovered that they knew it under the name of ol-umaina. The ol-umaina, they said, was fifteen feet long, with a head like a dog, small ears "marked somewhat after the fashion of a puff adder," claws, short legs, and a short neck. It was said to lie in the sun on the sand by the riverside, but slips into the water when it is disturbed, leaving only its head visible. This was in 1913: in 1978, when James Powell investigated the ol-umaina, he was told that it was an aquatic animal with hair-based scales, about six feet long, with a long tail and "a long soft and flexible mouth like an elephant's trunk". His informants identified it with a picture of Tyrannosaurus showed to them by Powell, though from its description it sounds nothing like this dinosaur. On the Kikuyu ndamathia there are less details: it had a role in Kikuyu ceremonies, was regarded as reptilian, and was said to have formerly been found in the upper waters of the Tana River. It was described as "a kind of crocodile", but it was also said to have a hairy tail. Sightings Undated C. W. Hobley reported that, sometime before 1911, a Kikuyu elder sent two men to retrieve the tail hairs of an ndamathia which was basking by the Kikira River. The men are supposed to have got it intoxicated with beer, then plucked the hairs and fled. 1907 John Alfred Jordan was a notorious English ivory poacher operating in southern British East Africa (now ), along the border with German East Africa (now ). This region was rarely visited by whites on account of the warlike nature of the local Masai and Kikuyu people: those who lived there were mainly poachers and smugglers of ivory, pelts, and horns. These traders eventually pacified the region, putting a stop to the constant intertribal warfare which interfered with their poaching and trafficking. Although he was an illegal poacher and smuggler, Jordan gained the respect of the government when he succesfully induced tribal leaders who had long been resisting British authority to meet with some imperial diplomats. He also was the first European to procure a skin of the mountain bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci) direct from the animal itself, though it was confiscated by C. W. Hobley, as it was poached. Jordan claimedJordan, John Alfred & Prebble, John (1956) Elephants And Ivory: True Tales Of Hunting And Adventure''Jordan, John Alfred & Leith, George (1959) ''The Elephant Stone that in 1907, whilst on a march towards the Migori River, he was led by his men to a dingonek in the river. He fired at it, apparently hitting it behind the ear, but it leaped at him and he fled. When he returned to the river, the animal was gone. The first person to hear and recount this story was the American hunter Edgar Beecher Bronson, whose camp at Engabai was visited by Jordan on 31 January 1909. Stuck in their tent on one stormy night, they got to discussing how many large animals remained to be discovered in Africa, and, after talking about the okapi, Jordan told his story to Bronson: Bronson was sceptical, so Jordan asked him to interview his hunting party about the incident, and, through an interpreter, they all gave more-or-less identical descriptions. Jordan himself also mentioned the encounter in a newspaper interview and a ghostwritten book: the details of the story were basically the same, but the date of the sighting and the size of the dingonek were slightly different. When Bronson published Jordan's story, it was widely regarded as a traveller's tale, but C. W. Hobley met a second eyewitness who claimed to have had an encounter with a very similar animal, at around the same time, on the Mara River near the border with German East Africa. According to Hobley: Current status Although no sightings have been recorded since 1907, Jordan wrote that, among local tribes, it was considered taboo to kill a dingonek, which Karl Shuker notes is a good omen for its continued existence. On the other hand, Heuvelmans regarded it as probably extinct, though he was more optimistic about the status of the water lions which he regarded as its cousins. Theories :See also: Water lion#Theories Hoax As noted above, at the time, Jordan's story was regarded as a "traveller's tale" - a made-up story - possibly because Jordan was specifically known as a good raconteur. However, C. W. Hobley was convinced of his sincerity after hearing of the second sighting, and Heuvelmans rejects the possibility of a hoax due to Jordan's consistency (over more than twenty years) with the overall story, and his in''consistency with the details. He notes that details such as the animals exact size and the date of the sighting would be likely to slip from memory after two decades, so according to Heuvelmans it would have been suspicious if Jordan (and his men) had given the exact same details time after time. Mistaken identity The description of the ol-umaina acquired by James Powell in 1978 seems to refer to the giant pangolin (''Smutsia gigantea), which has scales, a long snout, and a long tail, and is known to swim. Heuvelmans writes that it is not surprising that the Kikuyu could confuse a giant pangolin with the much larger and toothier dingonek, as both are rare and therefore little-known animals. Alternatively, he suggests that the name ol-umaina could originally have referred to a genuine unknown animal which had since gone extinct, leaving the Masai to apply the name to the most similar animal left: the giant pangolin. It was not suggested that a giant pangolin could account for the dingonek itself, on account of the latter animal's size and fangs - pangolins are toothless. Lukwata, reptilian, or living dinosaur Shortly after his meeting with Jordan, Bronson met animal collector James Martin, who told him that a large snake or aquatic creature had been seen on the shores of Lake Victoria. Before he set out on his safari, Bronson also met C. W. Hobley, who told him about the lukwata. According to Hobley, the Baganda, Wasoga, and Kavirondo people on the northern shores of Lake Victoria had been making sacrifices to the lukwata, because the last time they had seen it had been just before the outbreak of a sleeping sickness epidemic: they believed that it had been shot by a white man, and that the epidemic was punishment. As a result of this information, Bronson took the dingonek to be a lukwata which had left Lake Victoria, of which the Migori is a tributary. " has been applied to several different East African water monsters, none of which resemble the dingonek.]] However, Heuvelmans noted that the name "lukwata" has been applied to several different large East African water monsters, not just the true, serpentine animal of Lake Victoria, which in any case bears no resemblance whatsoever to the dingonek. In addition, though described as a giant reptile or fish, later sightings of the lukwata suggested that it was mammalian, as it swam with vertical undulations. Jordan could not decide if the animal were "a descendant of one of the huge prehistoric saurions that has by a process of adaptation — living as it does in impenetrable regions far away from the encroachments of civilized man - continued with but slight modifications through prodigious ages to the present time, or whether it is an unclassified reptile or amphibian", but he was certain it was a reptile or amphibian of some kind. Newspapers picked up on the idea that it could be a living dinosaur, and Jordan himself kept going back to this theory. However, Heuvelmans notes that the dinosaurs most suited to an amphibious lifestyle may have had smooth skin, not scales like those reported on the dingonek. Dinosaurs will still a fairly new and novel thing at the time, and it has been suggested that Jordan and the other eyewitness saw scales and other saurian features because they wanted to. Jordan and others at the time regarded the animal as reptilian on account of its scales. Heuvelmans' first theory regarding its identity was that it could have been a hypothetical giant type of dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus), which has a shorter and more rounded head than other African crocodilians. This short head is an important point, since the dingonek's cat, dog, or otter-like head bears no resemblance to the elongated head of any other crocodile. However, after a more detailed study of the case, Heuvelmans came to believe that the dingonek must have been a mammal. The head was always compared to that of a mammal, and Heuvelmans notes that the teeth of reptiles are usually uniform in appearance. Although some snakes have fangs, there are no known modern reptiles with pairs of very large canines: on the other hand, there are several different unrelated mammal groups which have developed sabre-teeth. In contrast, though scales are thought of as a reptilian feature, a number of mammals have them on part or all of their body: including pangolins, armadillos, rats, and giant ground sloths. Also, if the original ol-umaina was the same animal as the dingonek, it could not be a reptile, as it had a hairy tail. Additionally, although Jordan wrote that he regarded the animal he saw as reptilian, Heuvelmans notes that all his descriptions likened its features to those of mammals. Even when he described its scales, he compared them to those of an armadillo, not of a lizard, snake, or crocodile. Sabre-toothed cat Ignoring for a moment its alleged scales, the dingonek bears some resemblance to a sabre-toothed cat of the Machairodontinae family. The head of the animal was explicitly compared to that of a cat by Jordan, its large fangs or tusks are of course famous features of sabre-toothed cats, and its general body plan is relatively consistent with that of a sabre-toothed cat. Most of them seem to have had short but massive hind limbs, like those of the dingonek, and would have left larger footprints than modern-day cats. Water lions, which may be aquatic living sabre-toothed cats, are reported from West and Central Africa, but the closest established water lion to the Migori River is the "jungle walrus" of the 's Ituri Rainforest, several hundred kilometres away. However, a Bushman cave painting of an animal speculated to be a water lion in suggests that their hypothetical range may once have been larger than is believed, and Maurice and Walter de Rothschild both reported stories of very similar animals from East Africa and the Great Lakes region (thought to be proboscideans at around the same time as Jordan shot the dingonek. To explain the lack of fangs in the second sighting, Heuvelmans suggests that the sabre-teeth are smaller or even absent in the females of the species. The long paddle tail is more of a problem, as most sabre-toothed cats are believed to have had short tails, and most other water lions are reported to have cow- or horse-like tails. The biggest obstacle to this theory, however, is the scales reported by all sources, native and European. Although it is not totally impossible that a cat could develop scale armour, it is very unlikely, as they are predatory animals built for speed, not defense. Heuvelmans theorises that, if the dingonek is a cat, its "scales" could be explained as a trick of the light caused by the sun casting shadows on its shiny, wet fur, which could have been clumped up by the water. Jordan believed that the leopard-like spots of the dingonek were an optical illusion caused by the sun on its scales, but there is no reason the opposite couldn't be true. Similar cryptids Do you think the exists? If so, what do you think the is? Myth, folklore, hoax, or otherwise made-up Mistaken identity Living sabre-toothed cat Living dinosaur As noted above, although contemporary sources connected the dingonek with the lukwata, the two cryptids bear no real resemblance to one another. Bernard Heuvelmans classified the dingonek with the water lions, which also include the coje ya menia, dilali, mamaïmé, mourou-ngou, ngoroli, ntambo wa luy, nzefu-loï, and simba ya mail, among others. In popular culture *In modern portrayals, the dingonek is often depicted with a scorpion-like sting on its tail. The origin of this addition, which is not described in sightings or folklore, is unknown. Further cryptozoological reading *Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique, Plon, ISBN 978-2259003872 *Heuvelmans, Bernard & Rivera, Jean-Luc & Barloy, Jean-Jacques (2007) Les Félins Encore Inconnus d’Afrique, Les Editions de l'Oeil du Sphinx, ISBN 978-2914405430 Notes and references Category:Cryptids Category:Africa Category:Kenya Category:River monsters Category:River & lake monsters of the Nile system Category:Water lions Category:Ultra-mysterious beasts Category:Theory: Hoax Category:Theory: Mistaken identity pangolin Category:Theory: New crocodilian species Category:Theory: Living fossil - Sabre toothed cat Category:Theory: Lazarus taxon - Dinosaur Category:Historical - Modern Category:Featured Category:1907 Category:No recent sightings